Transcript Trends in Library automation and digital libraries Marshall Breeding Director for Innovative Technologies and Research Vanderbilt University http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/breeding Redefining Libraries: Web 2.0 and other Challenges May 2007 Xiamen,

Trends in Library automation
and digital libraries
Marshall Breeding
Director for Innovative Technologies and Research
Vanderbilt University
http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/breeding
Redefining Libraries:
Web 2.0 and other Challenges
May 2007 Xiamen, China
Business Landscape
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Library Journal Automated System Marketplace:
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An Industry redefined (April 1, 2007)
An increasingly consolidated industry
 VC and Private Equity playing a stronger role then
ever before
 Moving out of a previous phase of fragmentation
where many companies expend energies producing
decreasingly differentiated systems in a limited
marketplace
 Narrowing of product options
 Open Source opportunities rise to challenge
stranglehold of traditional commercial model
Library Automation M&A History
Consolidation among Libraries
for automation
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More libraries banding together to share automation
environment
 Reduce overhead for maintaining systems that have
decreasing strategic importance
 Need to focus technical talent on activities that have
more of an impact on the mission of the library
 Pooled resources for technical processing
 Single library ILS implementations becoming less
defensible
 Essential for libraries to gain increased leverage
relative to large companies
Diverse Business Activities

Many ways to expand business in ways
that leverage library automation
expertise:
Non-ILS software
 Retrospective conversion services
 RFID or AMH
 Network Consulting Services
 Content products
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Key Business Perspective
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Given the relative parity of library
automation systems, choosing the right
automation partner is more important than
splitting hairs over functionality.
 Understanding of library issues
 Vision and forward-looking development
Product and Technology Trends
Current state of the Integrated
Library System
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The core ILS focused mostly on print resources
and traditional library workflow processes.
Add-ons available for dealing with electronic
content:
 Link resolvers
 Metasearch environments
 Electronic Resource Management
A loosely integrated environment
Labor-intensive implementation and maintenance
Most are “must have” products for academic
libraries with significant collections of e-content
Library OPAC

Evolved from card catalogs and continues to
be bound by the constraints of that legacy.
 Complex and rich in features
 Interfaces often do not compare favorably with
alternatives available on the Web
 Print materials becoming a smaller component
of the library’s overall collections.
State of the Library OPAC?
Comprehensive Automation
The
goal of the Integrated
Library Systems involves the
automation of all aspects of
the library’s internal
operations and to provide key
services to library users.
ILS – Broad Overview
Business
automation system
Automates each aspect of a
library’s operations
Smaller libraries may
implement only selected
modules
Tightly integrated modules
ILS characteristics
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Shared bibliographic database
Holdings records
Copy records
Circulation transaction file
Patron database
Acquisitions: vendor database, financial
transaction files
 Serials – volume holdings records; issue
check-in records; summary holdings, routing,
etc
OpenURL Link Resolver
Context-sensitive Linking
Links to resources built dynamically
Benefits for library users

A more seamless and unified interface to
assist users with their research using library
resources
 Need to present the user with the appropriate
copy
 Ability to offer other services and options
 Multiple copies available for any given
document or resource
Benefits for Library Staff
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Static URL’s becoming untenable in electronic
publishing environment
Placing static links in 856 fields increasingly
untenable
URL’s change – direct deep linking unstable
Libraries change sources for content
Single point of management for article
databases and e-journal holdings

Can be populated and updated by providers such
as Serial Solutions
More than linking citation to full text
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Holdings look-up in OPACS
 Requests for document delivery
 Interlibrary Loan request
 Related works – more by this author
The down side of dynamic reference
linking
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More options, more complexity
 No guarantee that links created by a
resolving application will be successful
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Eg: TOC instead of full text
Users may not always understand what
is happening
 Maintaining the Link Resolver database
Reference linking framework
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A database populated with data about the library’s electronic
resources
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What aggregations the library owns
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Which titles available in each aggregation
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What years available for each title
Which stand-alone e-journals?
A&I databases
Metadata harvested from a citation and passed through the
OpenURL syntax
A resolver that turns metadata into a specific link to the
appropriate link
Resolver can provide links to other services
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ILL/Document Delivery request
Holdings Look-up in library catalog
Web search
OpenURL Framework
Linking Products – Applications that rely
on the OpenURL specification
 Sources -- a resource capable of
generating an OpenURL
 Targets – Web-based resources capable
of being linked to in an OpenURL
environment
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Link Server or Resolver
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A server that resolves an OpenURL into one or more
services.
Takes into consideration the local context of the user
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What content is available through subscriptions provided by
the institution?
What content is available within each database or full-text
aggregation
Other services available: print holdings; document
delivery; bookstore purchase;
OpenURL
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A de facto standard for reference linking
A syntax to create web-transportable
packages of metadata or identifiers about an
information object
Not a static link
 Transports metadata
 Relies on a local resolver, which makes use of
data carried on the OpenURL to perform
services
Linking Products
SFX -- Ex Libris
 WebBridge -- Innovative
 360 Link -- Serials Solutions
 LinkSource -- EBSCO
 1Cate -- Openly Informatics / OCLC
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Digital asset management
Products for creating and managing
collections of digital content
 Utility for creating metadata
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Dublin Core
 VRA
 Other library / discipline-specific formats
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Library-specific products
CONTENTdm – OCLC
 Digitool – Ex Libris
 Hyperion – SirsiDynix
 Luna Imaging
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Metasearching / Federated
Searching
Allows the user to enter a search once to
search multiple databases
 All selected resources searched
simultaneously
 Single user interface
 Results presented through the
metasearch application not in their native
interface
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Metasearch groupings
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Resources organized by the library into
groups
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Typically subject based
Relieves the users from having to know
what products cover what topics
 Generally impractical to search all
products in each query
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Common metaserach features
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Presents common interface for formulating
query
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Keyword combinations and options
Boolean operators
Results interfiled or separated by source
 Deduplication of results
 Sort and relevancy options
 Customization to blend with library’s Web site
– color scheme, fonts, layout, banner, logo,
etc.
Authentication
Needs to work for remote users
 Interface with campus authentication
environment
 Interacts with proxy servers
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Other Features
General tool for managing access to
electronic resources
 Links to native interfaces
 Select resources by subject
 Link to native interfaces
 Detailed information about each
resource
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Technical challenge
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How to perform search and retrieval among
many separate information resources that
operate in fundamentally different ways
 Target resources vary significantly
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Abstract and Indexing (A&I) databases
Full Text resources
Library Catalogs
Specialized databases
No single search and retrieval protocol used
among the common library information
resources
Limitations
Not all resources can participate in
metasearch environment
 Shallow result sets returned from each
target
 Difficult to achieve true relevancy
 Slow Performance
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Architecture and Technology
Components
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Take advantage of search and retrieval
protocols when possible
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Z39.50 (mostly library catalogs)
Web services
XML gateways
SQL interfaces
Proprietary API (Applications Programming
Interface)
HTML Parsing
Technology…
Connectors or source packages that
understand how to send queries to and
receive results from each resource
 All results converted into a unified record
structure
 Application component for managing
results
 Web interface for presenting results
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Moving forward:
Transition to an era of nextgeneration library interfaces
Traditional Library Search Model
 Provide
a full featured OPAC
 Give the user a screen full of search
options
 Assume that researchers will begin
with library resources
 Reliance on Bibliographic Instruction
Troubling statistic
Where do you typically begin your
search for information on a
particular topic?
College Students Response:
 89%Search engines (Google 62%)
 2% Library Web Site (total respondents -> 1%)
 2% Online Database
 1% E-mail
 1% Online News
 1% Online bookstores
 0% Instant Messaging / Online Chat
OCLC. Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources
(2005) p. 1-17.
New Library Search Model
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Don’t count on users beginning their research
with library catalogs or Web site
 Consider the library’s Web site as a
destination
 Make it a compelling and attractive destination
that uses will want to explore more.
 Web users have a low tolerance for ineffective
and clunky interfaces
Library Discovery
Model A
Web
Library Web Site / Catalog
Library as search Destination
Library Discovery Model B
Do not give up on library search
technologies!
 Libraries must also build their own
discovery, search, and access services
 Effective, elegant, powerful
 Once users discover your library, give
them outstanding services:
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Catalog search, federated search, contextsensitive linking, etc.
Library Discovery Model C
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Expose library content and services through nonlibrary interfaces
 Campus portals, courseware systems, e-learning
environments
 County and municipal portals and e-government
 Other external content aggregators: RSS, etc
 Web services is the essential enabling technology for
the delivery of library content and services to external
applications.
 Library community lags years behind other IT
industries in adoption of SOA and Web services.
Working toward next generation
library interfaces
Redefinition of the library catalog
 More comprehensive information
discovery environments
 Better information delivery tools
 More powerful search capabilities
 More elegant presentation
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Comprehensive Search Service
More like OAI
 Problems of scale diminished
 Problems of cooperation persist
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Replacement Search Interfaces:
Endeca Guided Search
 AquaBrowser Library
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Are library users satisfied with
native ILS interfaces?
Replacement OPACs
Endeca Guided Navigation
 AquaBrowser Library
 Common thread:
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Decoupled interface
 Mass export of catalog data
 Alternative search engine
 Alternative interface
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Expanded discovery and delivery
tools
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Ex Libris Primo (in development)
 Encore from Innovative Interfaces (in
development)
 Common threads:
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Decoupled interface
Comprehensive indexes that span multiple and
diverse information resources
Alternative interface
Library-developed solutions
eXtensible Catalog
 University of Rochester – River Campus
Libraries
 Financial support from the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation
 http://www.extensiblecatalog.info/
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Redefinition of library catalogs
and interfaces
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Traditional notions of the library catalog are
being questioned
It’s no longer enough to provide a catalog
limited to print resources
Digital resources cannot be an afterthought
Forcing users to use different interfaces
depending on type of content becoming less
tenable
Libraries working toward consolidated search
environments that give equal footing to digital
and print resources
Interface expectations
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Millennial gen library users are well acclimated
to the Web and like it.
 Used to relevancy ranking
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The “good stuff” should be listed first
Users tend not to delve deep into a result list
Good relevancy requires a sophisticated approach,
including objective matching criteria supplemented
by popularity and relatedness factors.
Interface expectations (cont…)
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Very rapid response. Users have a low tolerance for
slow systems
Rich visual information: book jacket images, rating
scores, etc.
Let users drill down through the result set
incrementally narrowing the field
Faceted Browsing
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Drill-down vs up-front Boolean or “Advanced Search”
gives the users clues about the number of hits in each sub
topic.
Navigational Bread crumbs
Ratings and rankings
Global vs Local
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How do library collections relate to the global
realm
Will mass digitization replace local library
collections?
The global arena excels at discovery
The local arena focuses on content delivery
All the global content discovery tools point to
locally managed content.
Multi-layered information
discovery
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Global : Google
Institutional / Regional : Primo
Granular: Individual catalogs and repositories
Broad -> Precise
Offer both the ability to “find a few good things” and to
“find exactly the right things (and all of them)”
Appropriate avenues for both the undergraduate
learner and the serious scholar.
Questions and Discussion